@ B and B: Behind these are the dynamics of dams of the world. An earthquake per se may not occur, but the forces unleashed on structures may be enough to throw the structure like a mine or a nuke or a building or a weather condition completely off the present state to into one of complete chaos. But perhaps the quakes are a compass for monitoring the state of the planet.

@Heart of the Rose: think it means it's no longer in the corium 'blob' state but capable of traveling into the earth's mantle in a stream-like state; which is much worse than any previous worst case scenario. There will be no remediation possible; resulting in radiological contamination of underground water-ways (interacting ocean and fresh-water aquifers) within this entire region, for hundreds-of-thousands of years.

Given the amount of energy needed to maintain a liquified condition without significant surface cooling is unusual. Classical thermodynamics has left the building…

Heart of the Rose and Aftershock: The Discussion is sobering because of the difficulty which waste immobilisation techniques like at Yucca are presenting for highly mobile most dangerous isotopes like Neptunium 237, after 100000 years. It looks as though the demoniac deed of achieving completely liquid uranium at Reactor 2 has shown the utter incongruence of the efforts at nuke waste storage sites. This is because of the nuclear effect of the dynamics of dams:
Glaring lacuna in meeting water needs:Nuclear Effect in Causing Earthquakes athttp://glaringlacuna.blogspot.in/2012/01/nuclear-effect-in-causing-earthquakes.html
The twin great earthquakes 8.7MM and 8.2 MM off the West Coast of Northern Sumatra was predicted by me on the basis of the effects of dams, to occur before the end of the present hydrological year and they occurred on April 11, 2012.
Thus this liquefaction will fdefinitely occur soon as the next hydrological year commences with the full force of the nuclear effect again being felt at fortuitiously placed nuclear reactors. The work of fifty years can be done in five. Rapidly change over to normal civilization using modern life as the changeover base state,now.

Hi Cindy, 'don't know if you saw the story here, but 30% of the children in the area around Fukushima already have thyroid nodules. The government has determined they are not malignant. How's that for government trumping science and medicine? If I'm not mis-quoting the article, it did say the government made the determination the nodules are not malignant.

That story came out some time in the past couple of months.

Also — not sure how close these children are to Fukushima Daichi, but I think they are in cities inside Fukushima Prefecture, and relatively close to the plant.

I think the only way to truly tell if the thyroid nodules are malignant is to do a biopsy, which they are not doing on the children's nodules. So the government cannot for a fact say that they are not malignant although they do make their statements as if they are facts.

On one hand, of course it is good to hear the gvt is finally doing the responsible thing.

On the other hand, the truly responsible action would be to evacuate these poor children and their families. The money for this free medical care is coming from the special "research" fund they just set aside to study the affects of the radiation exposure in Fukushima on the population.

"While the prefecture's cities, towns and villages have already made medical costs for children in the third-grade or younger free, the latest initiative will add a new system under which the medical costs for children between the fourth-grade and 18 years old will also be entirely subsidized.

"The new program will cost 4.7 billion yen annually, which will be covered by part of a fund created for monitoring prefectural residents' health."

/snip

W-A-T-K:

Lovely, huh? The gvt is treating its own citizens and their children like guinea pigs.

Guess the accounting projections showed it would be cheaper to pay for their medical care (and combined radiation study) than to pay to relocate so many people.

Sigh…why does it always seem to come down to money? Where is our humanity???

This statement from the above mentioned article gave me the chills/creeps:

"The future of Fukushima Prefecture rests on the shoulders of the children here. This initiative will be a symbol for making Fukushima the nation's best prefecture for giving birth to babies and raising children," said Fukushima Gov. Yuhei Sato."

Excuse me, but the future rests on the ADULTS' shoulders in the government of Japan. It is up to THEM to do the right thing and insure their children are out of harm's way, not simply leave them in the radiation-infested areas to rot! How can the children of Fukushima HAVE a future if their health has been compromised so badly from being forced to live in a toxic environment that TEPCO and the Japanese gvt. has created???

Sometimes the insanity of it all makes me wonder if I'm just in some strange Kafkaesque nightmare. Can somebody please wake me up now? Please?

In the case of babies who are so malformed to be unrecognizable, does the mother need to see the baby for closure, or, are the mothers afraid that the babies are healthy and distrust the doctors? Chernobyl resulted in rooms full of deformed children who had no say in whether they were forced to suffer or not. Most mothers did not have access to ultrasound tests. Personally, I would not want to keep a badly deformed baby alive 'just because' when babies are born with various organs outside their body, are unrecognizable, or born without brains or mental capacity except for nerve endings sensitive to touch. No way is it right to continue life in that case. It's merciful to end their life upon arrival rather than wait for them to naturally succumb to their internal dysfunctions as often happens with extreme radiation exposure, within a week or so. Many babies will be spontaneously aborted in the womb. It is a terrible tragedy for the mothers who are exposed to radiation, even worse for infants who cannot fend for themselves and will never know anything but pain. I think most mothers would not want to see their 'hope and joy' in this kind of shape but some might want to for closure. I feel very badly for them-

I know everyone is focusing on #4 spent fuel pool but with each reactor having its own set of unique problems I think it would be wise to expect the unexpected. That being a whole new unforeseen level that this catastrophe could ramp up to.

Good to hear some current statements from Michio Kaku. He has such a common sense, matter of fact way of summarizing this situation. His conversational style is a great way for the layperson and those who are just learning about the crisis in Japan to get some basic understanding of the situation. Understanding this situation does present one heck of a learning curve if you have no background or if you have not been following this situation from on onset like many have been here on Enenews.

What I would really like to here from Kaku is what he suggests people in Japan and in the Northern Hemisphere do if the situation gets worse. We can't all go South of the Equator.

I didn't listen to the full hour. Did MK explain how it is known as fact about a 100% liquefaction?

But if this is true then it raises many more theories and questions on the movement of a meltdown after it fully melts. The physics engineers are going to have lots of discussion.

If Unit 2 achieved full melt then what about 1 and 3? This may be standard fare for uncooled fuel cores. The bottom holes for moderator rods may have made easy egress for liquified fuel. Perhaps old Arnie knew something we were never told.

Pancake fuel theory moves up a notch on the possibility scale much to the chagrin of Anti-Arnies.

Enformable archives in March 15, 2011 show NRC requesting R4 boil-off times. Anyone read these documents? Maybe there's a 'core' answer there. Were they preparing the core for enrichment cycle while storing fuel in sfp? Reactor 4 sfp (+204 fresh rods) had several fires in March, June, Fall?, and January 2012, so go figure where the fuel is now. If whatever fuel is left, is in a pool (some dribbled out holes) that can't hold water, we have a constant dump of rad water and niblets into the ocean. Given recent articles, it appears the amount of the ocean dump is very disheartening even to Daiichi NPP workers.

In my view, there is no reason to try and 'save face' now unless you're a socipathic-pathologic personality buying time, or, there is a sabotage angle everyone is keeping mum. Excepting JStone's version of whodunnit (with a tired old scapegoat, puhleaz), we do not know who potential vs. real culprits are in a crime this heinous within the Daiichi plant and other NPP's. Only fools would perpetrate extreme revenge in a form that kills off the planet in the process- :/ Lots of questions, no answers. Why was the explosion in R4 lower than in R3? Can ground injection of? stop the flow of fuel to ocean?

Chernobyl only made it to the basement and formed an elephants foot. A pancake would only be temporary. Worst form would be a ball because of maximum chance of sustaining a chain reaction with larger cross-section. Ball will form as floor is eaten away and wet sand is encountered.

This is bad. Not only is this pretty much non fixable, it means now the ocean, surrounding ground water, and the earth itself is going to be dealing with a lot higher doeses of contamination. They probably are letting people return because they figure there is no evacuating Japan now.

What will this mean when it starts seeping into the ground? Will it heat the already unstable plates underneath Japan and cause even more earthquakes? And how will this react to all of the solar flares we've been getting hit with the past week?

And of course, how will this impact the US? California has already been hit hard, and I know of a couple farms in Oregon who were shut down because their crops were too radioactive.

SUPPORT ENENews

ENENews receives no funding from anyone or anything, except 1) People who donate via the button below, and 2) Google, who pays for the two ad spots. Thanks to all who have donated or are planning on doing so, it's nice to know people appreciate the site.